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LAMJUNG: The number of women opting for illegal abortion in Lamjung district is on the rise, authorities say.

The authorities asserted the alarming rate of increase in illegal abortion as the number of women with health complications visiting medical facilities after carrying out unsafe and illegal abortion increased in recent days.

District’s major health institution, Lamjung District Community Hospital, does not provide abortion services, however, the women visit the facility after facing health complications due to unsafe abortion.

Every day in India, 13 women die of unsafe abortions. It accounts for 10 to 12 per cent of total maternal deaths in Pakistan, and 7 per cent in Nepal. Unsafe abortions have increased three folds in the last decade in South Asia and this has become a pressing problem. These abortions are done without medical supervision, and include activities like inserting surgical devices or inapt herbs and spices or poison through the vaginal canal, consumption of non-OTC abortion pills without medical consultation, and perforation of the uterus. These methods are hazardous to the health of women as such abortions are performed by medically unqualified personnel and sometimes induced by the pregnant women on themselves and more often than not causes disability or worse, death.

Well, now we know—President Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh to fill Justice Kennedy’s U.S. Supreme Court seat. When Justice Kennedy announced he’ll retire at the end of July, there was a collective panic attack on the part of thousands of us who work to protect reproductive rights.

Kennedy was seen as a centrist and a critical “swing vote” on the court. In the early 1990s and again in 2016, he voted to preserve Roe v. Wade. What’s burning in my mind and the minds of so many of my colleagues and compatriots is Trump’s vow to ensure the Court has another justice who’s against abortion rights.

233 Tehrathum women receive safe abortion services in less than three months

Tehrathum, June 11, 2018

A noticeable number of women received safe abortion services in the district in less than the past three months.The District Health Office (DPHO), Terhathum had started free and safe abortion services at the District Hospital, two primary centers and 11 health posts in April. It is said 233 women underwent abortions through safe methods since the lunching of services in the hilly district of Province 1.

Side by side, public awareness programs on the safe abortion are going on in the district. An organization called ‘Abhiyan for Prosperous Tehrathum’ has been conducting Sexual and Reproductive Rights Strengthening Project. The project presently covers Basantapur, Solma, Aambung and Morahang.

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) Pastor Soman Rai and his group of volunteers from Kathmandu walk to a small church in the village of Shilaprabat, in Sindhupalchock, an area left devastated by the deadly earthquakes that shook Nepal three years ago.

The only way to access the area, located some 80km (50 miles) east of the capital, is via a wire footbridge and a narrow dirt path.

Once there, Rai and the group set up a table of pamphlets, and hang a large sign with the colorful handprints of children around the slogan "I Choose Life." At the bottom of the banner is the name of Rai's organization -- Voice of Fetus Nepal.

Migrating males and population decline
Nepal’s fertility rate is going down even though contraceptive use has not increased

Om Astha Rai
March 23, 2018

Sita Yonjan, 21, has a two-year-old daughter, and recently stopped using contraceptives even though she is not planning to have another child. She says she doesn’t need her birth control implant anymore because her husband went away to work in Qatar two months ago.

Yonjan visited a health post in Rayale village of Kavre to remove the birth control implant that she had inserted last year. The tiny device prevents births for five years, and does not need to be removed even when users abstain from intercourse. But many Nepali men want their wives to stop using contraceptives when they leave for overseas work.

A little more than a year ago after the Mexico City Policy, also known as the ‘Global Gag Rule,’ (GGR) was reintroduced by President Donald Trump on his first day in office; the fear of its dreaded impact is beginning to be felt.

GGR is an executive order by the US government that blocks U.S. federal funding for non-governmental organisations that provide abortion counselling or referrals, advocate to decriminalise abortion or expand abortion services.

Sex selective abortion is illegal and punishable as per the laws, but it has become rampant in recent years mainly due to parents’ preference for sons.

Sharada (name changed), a 28-year-old woman from Bhaktapur Sharada, has two daughters already and when she was expecting her third child she decided to go for sex selection mainly due to family pressure. For this, she along with her husband went to India and when they came to know that she had a baby girl in her womb, she decided to abort the three-week-old foetus.

Discussion of abortion somehow always manages to spark controversies in our society. However, the fact remains that after its legalization, many Nepali couples have been turning to it. What’s intriguing though is that despite the expansion of authorized abortion services, reports of abortion complications are still prevalent.

Priyanka Gurung talks to those who have been responding to these cases to find out where the problem lies.

Of the 56 million annual abortions performed around the world, nearly half, or 25 million, posed some threat to the health or life of the woman. The vast majority of unsafe abortions – 97 percent — were performed in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

And about half of those abortions in poor countries are unsafe, compared with just 12.5 percent in wealthy countries, according to a report in last week's issue of The Lancet, the British medical journal.

Gilda Sedgh, an author of the paper, is a scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive rights research organization. We talked with her about the problem of unsafe abortions in low-income countries. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.